You're My Hero
by Pretenders
Summary: Medals don't always represent the true good guy. No Foul Language. Romance implied.


_**Thank-you for noticing this story.**_

**You're My Hero**

_You're my hero._

Tradition is meant to never be altered. History is meant to educate the present, to avoid destruction in the future. Ralph knew tradition labeled him as a villain, and history prevented him from being accepted as the man he knew he could be. Fix-it Felix was an archetype of a good guy, the image of a charming man with good virtue. Felix was there to fix what Ralph wrecked, but he never once tried to fix him. Ralph never felt comfortable in his spiteful category, were no one else regarded him besides a "bad guy who wrecks everything." There was no hope in pretending to be a good guy, he thought, if tradition would always be there to put him back into his place. Gold medals would always be meant for Felix—the good guy.

However, medals were not always a victory item given to the good guy. There was a prize even better; a prize that would never rust, or crack. Ralph hadn't known just how much Felix missed out on a good guy victory until he met her. She did not even reach half his size or even half his strength, but she had an invisible strength to make him feel weak. He had no concept or hypothesis to what her strength could possibly be.

What he didn't know was the fact that she was more like him than he ever thought she was. She, too, was treated like the bad guy. She was never called by her name, probably the most beautiful name he'd ever heard, Vanellope. Instead, they referred to her as the "glitch." The other racers did their best to outcast her and create obstacles to hinder her from entering their races. They believed she wasn't meant to be there to assist any one of them, just there to cause trouble and threaten to bring the end of their game. So they treated her just like the Nicelanders treated him—they ignored her want to be accepted.

But Ralph wasn't about to become a Nicelander or a Racer; he knew her quiet feelings within, a feeling to desperately be heard, and that hand shake made him forget his lost medal that she had erased into codes, and it made him forget about the ignorance he received from others. His bad guy coding could not hold back the secret codes within himself that made him feel something else other than the need and will to wreck everything. He didn't want to wreck her; he didn't want to hurt her, or anything she loved.

Then, his coding made him do just that. Her first ever chance at being highly regarded ended when his fists touched her go-kart. Her cries hurt his heart. She ran from him and he couldn't bring himself to run after her. Not after the gift she had just handed to him. The cookie heart around his neck proved to him he could never truly change the present to avoid destruction in the future. History was there for a reason, and he had to realize that the hard way.

"You really _are _a _bad _guy."

Yes, he was; he would never be anything more than that. She contradicted the scribbles on that cookie heart, proving to him that there was nothing more to his being than to wreck it. His fingers closed upon the cookie heart with a gentleness he never experienced. He tried his best to place less pressure than he was used to once he closed his fist over the heart. Then he asked himself, was it a heart for a reason? Was a heart the only thing he needed to prove to himself he was able to fix _something_? He had a heart, he knew it, but he never listened to his heart until now, when he planned to earn a medal to demonstrate his "good guy" abilities. He didn't need a medal to bring evidence to Felix or the Nicelanders that he, too, could be just as highly regarded as Felix.

No, he didn't need a medal at all. What he needed was something more—a heart—the one thing he realized he could never wreck.

It took a lot of his strength to return to her, as well as to apologize. He was desperate, in need of some way to fix what he had already wrecked. It wasn't soon until he discovered the good guy sealed up in a fungeon, as they called it. There, he confessed how being locked up could bring utter depression to one's being. He expressed how he was kicked out, something Ralph experienced every time he tried to make his way into the pent house after arcade hours. He expressed the frustration of being a good guy with the power to fix everything. Ralph knew it all too well; he knew it for thirty years. That's when Felix understood Ralph's want to be something more than just the guy thrown in the mud, and with one touch of his hammer, Felix finally helped fix Ralph for the first time.

She was chained up when he found her. Her elbows lay on her thighs, as her palms supported her chin. Her upset mood didn't manage to keep back the corner of her lips from presenting a smile, for when he saw her, she could do anything but. It was then when Ralph saw to it that medals and good guys were just one form of being recognized.

"_I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."_

He reached into his plaid overalls, feeling the cookie heart still in one piece.

"_Because if that little kid likes me, how bad can I be?"_

It was the one thing he could never wreck. She might have saved him from being disintegrated, but he knew he saved her, as well. As the game restarted, she transformed into her true form. Her pink, ruffled dress made it known to Ralph just who she was meant to be. Her princess form took the place of a worthless medal, since she meant so much more to Ralph than anything. For only good guys end up with a princess.

* * *

_**This story is inspired by, "This Way" by Jewel.**_

_**Have a good day!**_


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